


(we are like) pendulums

by gunpowdereyes



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M, bisexual Darren, discussion of social anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 20:36:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4934386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunpowdereyes/pseuds/gunpowdereyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“That probably was my favourite thing that Darren used to do. The thing that I think he does the best, is write music. He’s like an absolute genius. He’s the best. And in college he would always sit around with his guitar. Darren was like an awkward guy. At parties and stuff, and he doesn’t really talk to people, so he plays his guitar. And Darren would just constantly be making up songs about people who were in the room with him. And when I lived with Darren, he had a piano set up and I would just be making spaghetti and Darren would sing a song going: Nick’s making spaghetti. Just making up songs and that was a great thing.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>—  	Nick Lang (via darrencrissstarkid on tumblr)</p><p>Inspired by the above, a semi-AU about well-meaning contrarian Chris and how deeply unimpressed he is by socially awkward Darren, both set loose with some Starkids in tow as almost-adults in San Francisco.  </p><p>Sometimes it isn't love at first sight.  Sometimes it's love at fiftieth.</p><p>For the 2015 CrissColfer Big Bang.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to the sweet, amazing, and terrifyingly talented heukii, my artist partner for this project who created this beautiful art: http://heukii.tumblr.com/post/130538441404/darren-is-a-revelation-of-course-he-is. She was definitely more patient with my indecision and sudden changes in my life and availability than I ever deserved!
> 
> Much the same sentiment to my beloved beta, Liralen/fromcainwithlove, who probably should have annulled our fake marriage for letting me rope her into this. ILU wife, you are the best.
> 
> Title unimaginatively borrowed from Sarah Harmer's "Pendulums."

Darren is not what Chris expected.

In the weeks since he’s moved to San Francisco, he has been by turns overwhelmed and freaked out and enthralled and exhausted, caught up in some kind of bizarrely low-key whirlwind of activity that seems to be bred and honed in this city. 

The occasional trips with his family as a kid hadn’t prepared him at all for living here as a pseudo-adult, sharing space with three people who already knew each other in an apartment that always smells faintly (and somewhat stereotypically, he thinks with a sigh) of weed.  He’s been incorporated into casual friendships without being made to feel as if he has to work for them or change anything about himself to earn them.  He’s stayed up until 6 a.m. talking about Marvel movies and accidentally getting into a furious and bitter two-hour debate about Batman, and come out the other end of it in a group hug with Lauren, Joey, and Nick (and okay, he very possibly did smoke with them, that night).  He’s met boys he could never have dreamed of in Clovis, tall and short and smirky and sweet, and some of them so smooth he blushes just to think about it, getting numbers slipped to him in coffee shops and at bars and once while in line at the grocery store. 

(Lauren pulls him aside and has a serious talk with him about whether or not these guys are pedophiles, as she says Chris might be 22 but still looks 13 years old.  He laughs her off but does schedule himself to get a better haircut that week, just to be safe.  He’ll never tell her, but BART-guy who said he was 26 but actually looked closer to 45 and was trying to lure him to a bar in the Castro was probably the exact kind of man she was warning him against.)

Answering the ad and finally making the move to San Francisco is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.  A three-bedroom so well-located in the Mission Chris could cry; he’s basically paying a third of market value for this place because Joey’s sister owns it and has relocated permanently to Hawaii, and apparently she’s loaded already and is willing to let Joey coast for a while.  He suspects Joey’s whole family is loaded, Joey included, but he doesn’t ask questions, especially not when he’s only standing to gain.  Besides, nothing of Joey’s gangly nerdy charm reeks of the kind of money Chris was raised to be suspicious of … and thankfully his parents aren’t much more than politely interested when Chris claims the place and the location are exactly what he wants. 

Being able to roll out of bed to this incredible city with these weird and charming people, and roll back in with some handsome boy of his choosing if he wants to – even three years ago, he would never have dreamed this for himself.  Saying it’s night and day from Clovis is understating it – it’s different realms of existence.  High school was one suffocating hell; home was another, though at least he loved the people in it.  He was never much but crushingly lonely; almost always felt like he had a neon sign attached that named him the only gay kid for 50 miles – the only one who couldn’t pass for straight, anyway.  College was a little better, but here?

He’d never have dreamed this life for himself.  He might not have immediately pegged Joey and Lauren as his kind of people; would have pre-judged them to lean too far into hipster territory (which he knows is a bit rich coming from a would-be author who wears his glasses too big and his jeans too tight and lives for herbal tea and Disney movies and legitimate irony and is really, helplessly addicted to cute hats).  Before them he would also never have trusted that any people could have _that_ many friends and have them all actually be _friends._ But they are laid-back and funny and genuine, and when they are in work mode, organizing and planning and writing and finding ways to fund the fledgling production company they’re nursing to life, their dedication and work ethic puts Chris to shame.

So when, in the middle of everything else, he repeatedly hears “just wait until you meet Darren, you’re going to love him,” he doesn’t really doubt it even though it flies in the face of how he normally operates.  Darren Criss – spelled out for him for distinguishing emphasis – is apparently the benevolent rock god of this group of friends, the glue that holds them all together, the pinnacle they all aspire to … the drunker they get, the more they gush.  Joey has a thousand stories of his platonic soulmate and the no good they got up to together at Michigan.  They show him pictures and complain when Chris isn’t around for their Skype dates with him – which he tries not to be, not that he’d ever tell them that.  It’s a bit like being 15 and his parents making him trot out to catch up with his Aunt Marilyn, and answer all of her questions about how he’s doing in school and if he has a girlfriend yet.  Too much weird pressure to perform and conform.

But it never ends.  “If Darren was here this party would be on 12 by now.”  Or, “just wait, you’ll see.  You’ll be dropping your pants the second he smiles at you, Colfer.”  (Which he sort of resented, and had to coax reassurance out of Lauren that he didn’t actually strike her as being _that_ easy.  Sure he’s had some revelatory flings, a relief after awkwardly and uncomfortably losing his virginity in college with a boyfriend with whom sex never really got satisfyingly less awkward and uncomfortable, but next to his roommates he is definitely well back in third place for random sexual encounters).

“No,” she said, patting his shoulder only a little condescendingly.  “No, if anything, sometimes you seem harder to get than calculus.  But Darren’s just naturally charming.  Some people have skills – don’t get me wrong, he has lots – but flirting comes as naturally to him as breathing.  Girls, boys, inanimate objects.  You’ll see.”  So the Darren in his head fused with the Darren he’s glimpsed from videos and pictures to become this Thing – an exuberant sweet boy, a multi-talented worldly charmer whose delight with life is contagious, who was larger than life in a way that Chris wants to admire, is concerned he’ll resent, and truthfully, kind of fears.

…

The first time he meets Darren in person he thinks, well.  Maybe he’s having an off day.

He didn’t necessarily plan to, but Chris took care anyway to get ready for the welcome home party they’re throwing Darren, painted-on jeans and new shoes and a black button-down that shows off all the work he’s been doing on his arms and flatters the work he’s still trying to do on his stomach.  Darren apparently graduated and returned to Europe to expand on his previous semester in Italy, then spent weeks adventuring with family in the Philippines, then – Chris had to stop listening, but something about Ireland and England before he had a full-scale jealousy blackout.  Chris and his family went to Florida once.  Disneyworld was fun, but it mostly rained and Chris still managed to sunburn his forearms and the backs of his knees. 

Objectively Chris can see that Darren is as purely attractive in person as he’d seemed to be in pictures.  But he’s shorter than Chris thought, and is sporting an enormous caveman beard, and his hair is a tangled curly mess and has sort of ridiculous pink sunglasses perched in it, and his neon socks don’t match.  He also looks at Chris for a beat more than is really socially comfortable before sort of grimacing and glancing away.  Also he’s never actually asked after all the implications that Chris would have him in bed in five minutes, but Darren is – surely – one step away from trucker hat straight?  He instantly asked if Lauren’s boobs had gotten bigger when he hugged her and didn’t shut up about the Giants for ten minutes straight.  Months of boys who have found much more interesting things about Chris have taught him to be fine with the fact that he honestly doesn’t know offhand the difference between the A’s, the Giants, and the Raiders.  He’s sure they’re probably different sports and Joey would probably slap him for asking (even though he seems to reserve most of his random fanaticism for Michigan-related things).  But Chris loves these people, and they love Darren, for as much as he strikes Chris as _that_ kind of rich kid – obnoxious and slumming it to be ironic (the fake kind) and it just doesn’t line up.    

Then Darren goes silent, sitting on an arm of the couch while the growing stream of people come to talk to him.  He nods and smiles and listens, and appears to be drumming on the coffee table as if he can’t help tapping along to whatever beat is in his head.  When it becomes obvious that Darren isn’t coming to Chris – despite regularly looking at him on and off, and Chris just knows these things now – he finally decides to be a good pseudo-host and make the first move here.  He joins the queue when it relocates behind Darren in the kitchen, but despite Chris hanging around for five minutes waiting, Darren seems startled to look up and find him there.  He sticks out his hand.  “Hey!  Um, hi?”  His handshake is sloppy-loose and his grin is toothy and just a little crooked, and he’s definitely already very drunk, which means he probably arrived here drunk.  At 7:00 pm.  Charming.  “I am so sorry man, I know Joey said there was a new roommate but I’m completely spacing.  C-something.  Charlie?” he looks so hopeful that for a half-second, Chris is tempted to answer yes.

But the impulse passes as the implication sets in.  “Chris,” he says, feeling a little stung, as if he’s been had in some elaborate way that’s about to sneak up on him.  “I’ve heard so much about you I could probably write a paper about you, but I guess it didn’t go both ways?”  He settles into that cool, crisp smile he’s learned to perfect for shutdowns.  Apparently he has a face for it.  (He has decided to take this as a compliment.)

Darren blinks at him.  “Chris.  Sorry …  right, um, no?  No, I mean yeah it has, Laur keeps telling me I need to meet you, and how great you are and stuff, and we’ve got lots in common.  And stuff,” he adds eloquently.  He’s slurring a little, clearly letting the counter do most of the work holding him up.

“I’m … not really sure that’s true.”  He tries to be reasonably subtle about tipping more vodka into his glass – which seems urgently necessary to keep going here – although he’s not sure Darren would be able to recognize it if Chris was drinking straight from the bottle.

“Oh no, I’m sure we’ve–” He takes a deep breath.  “You know I’m totally not hitting on you right?”

Chris decides _not_ to take this as a compliment.  He leans against the fridge and stares at Darren.  “Trust me, I’m really fine with that.”  A burst of laughter erupts from the kitchen over the pulsing music, and they both glance toward it before looking back to each other. 

“Um, right.  Sorry.  So.”  Darren stares at his hands for a moment, then blurts, “so what do you do?”

Chris wonders if this is a conversation he really wants to get into right now, especially considering how it normally goes, _especially_ given the circumstances.  His roommates and coworkers at the paper don’t think it’s ridiculous, but in Chris’s experience so far, they’re in the minority.  “I’m a writer,” he says finally, which is at least a half-truth.  “I graduated journalism and I’m doing grunt work with the Chronicle, but my real goal is creative writing.  I’m working on a novel right now.”  A tiny part of him internally cringes.  If he _was_ trying to impress or hit on Darren, he could probably stand to sound less like a pretentious douchebag.  Good thing he isn’t doing either of those things.

“Man, that’s _awesome_ ,” Darren says, and then grabs Brian Holden as he walks past, shaking him a little.  “Chris is a writer!  Like a real one.  Totally awesome, right?”  Oh wait.  From this angle Chris can tell he’s also very stoned.

“Totally awesome,” Brian parrots, “and I totally knew that.”  He wanders back out with a beer in each hand.  “C’mon Darren, your captive audience awaits.  And by that I mean I can’t find the key for the lock on your guitar case so come fucking man up.”

“So I kinda sing,” Darren chirps, ignoring Joey also yelling at him from the living room, but shrugging with a show of self-deprecation that instantly raises Chris’s hackles.  Especially since Chris hasn’t even asked yet.

“Well, you either do or you don’t,” he says (snaps, can’t help it), “and all your friends say you do, and that you’re really good at it, and from what I’ve heard that’s more than true.  And supposedly you’re a great songwriter and musician and, I don’t know, working on the cure for cancer in your spare time, probably.  So don’t do the false modesty thing.  It’s tacky and fake, and it’s just not attractive.  Especially when you’re probably too wasted to spell your own name.”

Darren’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out.  Chris realizes a beat too late that he’s already used his perfect exit line, and gives him a quick eyeroll over his shoulder as he leaves the room.  A beat after that he realizes nothing gave him any indication that Darren was ever trying to be attractive to Chris.  A beat still after that, he remembers that he lives here and can’t actually float out of the apartment the way he wants to – he probably has had a little too much to drink.  He settles for retreating to his bedroom and locking the door.

He has an early morning anyway, and it’s not worth pursuing this weird mixture of irritation and disappointment in his gut.  Besides, it’s kind of satisfying, like a badge of honour, that he met this larger than life guy he was supposed to be nuts about and felt nothing at all.  The live music has started up in the living room, presumably led by Darren.  When he goes to bed he stuffs in headphones and flicks through his phone.  A cute guy he sees every other day at the mailboxes put his number in there a few days ago.  He sets himself a reminder to text him tomorrow.   Onwards and upwards.


	2. Chapter 2

Chris has always been stubborn.  He prides himself on the self-awareness it takes to know it and own it.  Occasionally he digs in to the point of being stupid, but more often than not, it’s the right call and plays in his favour.  When he’s fighting for article space, when he refuses to give up on a scene that refuses in kind to come together for him, when he’s buckled down and reminded himself he doesn’t need to change when he’s been told he’s too skinny or too effeminate or too vanilla.  Hell – when he flatly refused to read or see Twilight despite his best friend at the time threatening to disown him for it.  Or watch the live TV version of _The Sound of Music_.  Or try to get into something more certain than a writing career.  Or give up on Britney Spears.  It’s really become a very long list.  

He knows he doesn’t give an instant impression of toughness, but no one knows the backbone he has until they try and fail to bend it.  So every time Lauren insists over the next two weeks that he just caught Darren at a weird time, that she wasn’t playing some stupid joke on him and Darren really is exactly his kind of person, she swears – he becomes entrenched and more and more determined to hate him.  He’s (almost) always been an excellent judge of character.  Anyway Darren’s character is fine.  It’s just a little lacking, and holds literally no appeal for Chris.

And!  Darren has no social skills.  He’s either dead quiet when he’s around (which seems to be always) or he talks way too much, or failing that he seems to just sing.  All the time.  Usually not even real songs; usually it’s about his walk from his car, or Lauren doing her hair, or Joey’s new phone.  One day he stops by to pick up Joey for “a day of fearless and epic adventuring” – Chris does not ask – and actually sings a little made-up song about singing while he waits for Joey to get ready.  Chris tries to be very obvious about making a beeline for the Advil, but it doesn’t seem to work because Joey comes out and joins in.  

At least one thing is true: Darren has a beautiful voice.  Maybe in a different world, one in which he wasn’t trying to figure out a rhyme for “vibrato” to the tune of Dancing Queen, it would be at least pleasant.    

Unfortunately, his decision to hold Darren at acquaintance distance coincides exactly with Darren apparently trying harder and harder to get and hold Chris’s attention.  Chris is in tune enough to know when someone’s interested in him, and Lauren’s confirmed that Darren’s bi (and punched Chris for even insinuating that Darren shouldn’t have been complimenting her boobs so enthusiastically).  He seems to pay rapt attention when Chris is talking, chimes in when Chris shows enthusiasm about anything (and often derails the conversation to a different tangent when a thought occurs to him, as if his brain can’t help itself), shows up with iced coffees for all of them one day, despite the persistent gray fog surrounding their house.  

“It was sunny when I left the house, sorry,” he says with a lopsided grin.  “Close your eyes and think tropical?  Maybe turn up the heat.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” Chris tells him without looking up from his laptop.  

“I – oh, really?  I’m sorry man, I’ve seen you at Blue Bottle a few times, I just thought …”

“Tea.”  

“Oh.”  He takes a deep breath and Chris feels simultaneously vindicated and a little bit like he’s kicked a puppy.  A really annoying, yippy puppy.  “I don’t actually drink coffee either …” he’s gesturing with his coffee, which they both look to.  Chris somewhat incredulously, he is aware.  “Except once in a long while, it honestly was hot back at the house, so I thought cold …  You know how it is.  Um, did you want me to go back out–”

“No.  Thank you, Darren.”

Then he comes over and keeps Chris awake all night while he’s trying to meet a deadline and the “band” is “practicing.”  Chris can’t use those terms any more loosely for the endless instrumental riffs, can’t even think them without mentally adding air quotes.  Darren seems perfectly serious about it, but maybe Darren can’t pay attention to his own ten minute ode to ramen through the thick sickly-sweet smoke while they’re on break from playing …  whatever they were playing.  While he was in fact stealing and eating Chris’s ramen.

Being objectively attractive and having an objectively nice voice is seriously not enough to help Chris find any appeal in everything else.  When Darren adds insult to injury by crashing on their couch for the fifth time in two weeks, messing up Chris’s morning routine every which way and being an irritating staring pair of eyes while he’s getting ready and trying to quietly watch the news, Chris just can’t take it anymore.

“Where does he even live?!”  He startles and corners Joey one Saturday morning, Joey taking a slow bite of the pop tart hanging out of his mouth as he blinks at Chris.  Darren has just gone home.  Again.  “Doesn’t he have other friends he can stay with?  Isn’t he dating someone?  Can’t he ever go _home_?”

“Okay, a) chill the fuck out dude, it’s waaay early to be yelling and you’re gonna have a coronary, and b) Darren’s living with his folks right now way the hell out in the suburbs.  It’s a crazy hike and our casa es Darren’s casa and all that.  You want him to drive home drunk?  You want him to be a criminal?  He would not do good in jail, dude.”  He swallows down the rest of the pop tart in one impressively disgusting bite.  “Besides, it’s not like I’m crying every time somebody stays over with you.”

“Okay, whoa, that’s a whole other thing – and another thing that’s hard to do with some random hobo crashing here in the middle of everything – but they also don’t stay on the couch, and neither of you is even sleeping with Darren!”  He looks more closely at Joey, because that really never occurred to him before.  “Are you?  I mean, no judging.  Obviously.  Unless you both are, which is just – I mean, still no judgment, but maybe some logistical questions.”

“Uh, man, no.”  Joey looks briefly nauseated.  “No, platonic bros only, although whatever happened in college stays in college, blah blah.  Anyway, Darren thinks you’re cool.  You know that right?”

“Great,” Chris says, trying to at least keep his sigh internal.  So Darren really is an obnoxious slumming rich kid who lives with his parents who has a one-sided interest in Chris.  Worse and worse.

“Hey, hang on!”  Joey hollers down the hall as Chris heads to his room.  “Did you just call Darren a ‘random hobo’?  He’s not random!”

…

Chris brings a date to one of the shows Darren’s playing at a bar.  Tim.  Tom.  Something like that.  They met very briefly three nights before in a bar that led to a bathroom stall (another stereotype that Chris normally at least pretends to be above), but to Chris’s surprise he had a “let’s get to know each other” text the next day.  Right now he’s mostly moral support, a (slightly too sweaty) hand to hold while Darren will likely sing his stupid heart out before he’s back offstage and being an ass.  He really is perplexing that way.

True to form, Darren is captivating when he’s performing.  If he has a real element he’s definitely in it, covering everything from Stevie Wonder to Sinatra to Jason Mraz to show tunes as easily as if they were all written for him.  He plays his own music too, catchier than Chris would like to admit as he watches Darren’s fingers move, effortless and graceful, on the piano, on the guitar, banging out on the drums for his last song, because of course he plays those too.  He sets his jaw and pulls Tim closer, pretending he doesn’t see Darren’s eyes land and linger for a moment on them before he looks away.

Two days later Darren crops up unannounced (of course) and when Chris comes out of his room, he finds that Darren has met Chris’s new best friend, a rescue cat the size of a small mountain lion and with a similar temperament.  Brian the cat looks at him suspiciously.  Darren sneezes violently.  “Shit.  I am going to … deed …”   He sneezes again, twice.  Chris watches him expectantly.  “Medication.”  His voice is thick with congestion.  “I’m pretty allergic do cats …” He looks sad.  “Which sucks because I love animals.”

 _Good_ , Chris thinks smugly.  Less random visits for Chris to negotiate.  Less lost noodles, less five bucks loaned that Chris will never see again, in a desperate rush to catch a bus because Darren’s car ran out of gas and he needed to be somewhere immediately (to do something pointless and stupid, as it transpired).  Less wondering why someone would order extra pineapple AND hot peppers on pizza outright without even asking around, when any pineapple at all is a travesty (Chris has never tried it but it sounds disgusting and he stands by it, damn it).  Less staring at that wild mess of curls and thinking, well, if he ever got out of bed before noon and found a comb, or at least conditioner, and ever stopped wearing stupid threadbare superhero t-shirts (which Chris is not single-minded enough to not acknowledge that he would find charming, maybe even want himself, under other circumstances.  But then Darren wears either the same or an identical Michigan t-shirt three times in 72 hours and Chris can’t decide which would be worse) … and he’s just odd, and awkward, and rambles about bands Chris should check out and movies Chris might like and how popcorn flavouring is weird and popcorn should be left alone with butter, unless it’s Chicago mix, but only if it’s Garrett’s, and has Chris ever been to Chicago?  He should totally go.  Chicago is one of those places Darren really feels alive.  

Chris declines to point out he’s heard this description of at least six cities now, and three countries.

Chris has mentally replaced all of the adjectives he was using to think of Darren: cute yes, worldly probably, but now he’s mostly exasperating, awkward, fidgety.  Sometimes even strangely dull.  He tried on one occasion to engage Chris in a legitimate conversation about the weather.  And granted, Chris has been deliberately difficult to engage, but mostly because he does not know what to make of Darren.  When he performs he’s _amazing_.  But that man is very different from the boy he appears to be the rest of the time, and Chris just doesn’t know which is a front and which is the real thing.  If either of them even are real.

“You should probably get some meds,” Chris says sweetly, steering Darren out of the apartment.  Brian curls back into a tight circle of endless fur and goes to sleep.  

…

Lauren comes back from two weeks with her parents in Michigan and Chris is absolutely dying to rub her nose in how wrong she was.  

“So the jury’s in – or out?  I always forget what that expression is – anyway, Darren still does not make me want to drop my pants!  He kind of makes me want to put on extra pants.  Why didn’t we put money on this?”

She doesn’t laugh the way Chris expected, just purses her lips and scrutinizes him.  “I heard about that,” she says carefully.  “I’ve been wrong before so there’s no saying you had to get along like a house on fire or anything.  Of all possible outcomes, up to and including you being married by now, I just … um, would not have banked on this one.”  She drops onto her bed and pats the spot beside her for him to sit.  “So why do you hate him?  And so we’re clear, just because I didn’t put money on it with YOU doesn’t mean I’m not out money ON you, if that makes you feel any better.”

“I don’t hate him,” Chris says, and he feels unfairly wrong-footed in this now, like he’s done something he shouldn’t have.  “We just don’t have anything in common, and he’s kind of around all the time, and you know I like space, and he’s a bit –“ he searches for another word for “strange,” with little success. “Different.  Plus I’m busy.  I need some space and quiet and Darren isn’t really helpful with that.”

“Okay,” Lauren says, everything about her uncharacteristically serious.  “Okay.  I respect the hell out of you Chris, you know that, and you’re an excellent roommate.  But – look, can you at least be civil with him?  Because of course he’s a complete weirdo but he’s _our_ weirdo, and he’s our best friend.  And I know you probably just don’t care to see it, but Darren’s a good guy.  I don’t know what you’re bringing out in each other and I don’t know why, but I’d like to keep both of you around, okay?”

“That’s an excellent bad cop routine, Lauren.”  She smiles but still doesn’t laugh, and that bad feeling sinks deeper into Chris’s stomach.  “Are you … thinking about kicking me out?”  He’ll take Darren to dinner for ten nights straight before he lets that happen.

“No, of course not.”  Lauren’s absently kicking her feet – she can’t reach the floor sitting on her bed, and sometimes Chris forgets how tiny she is in the face of her larger-than-life personality.  “Not unless you start a fistfight or something.  Then I wouldn’t kick you out either, I’d just want to sell tickets and make some easy party money.”  She flops backwards, studying the ceiling, seems to consider her next words before she says them.  “He likes you, though.  Just for the record.”  

Chris groans.  “So I keep hearing.”

Lauren punches him in the leg.  “All right, enough of that.  So tell me why you named a cat after Holden, and how I’m never on litter duty because I got no say in the adoption,” she says, smiling.

“Oh for – _he already had that name_ ,” he explains for the thousandth time, but he can’t stop laughing.  


	3. Chapter 3

Six months in and Chris has already decided that when it arrives, fall will be his favourite season in San Francisco.  He’s heard that the weather will be warm and sunny without being oppressive or sticky.  The worst of the tourist crowds will have cleared, and he’s hoping he’ll stop feeling as if he should be counted among them.  That’s small comfort in foggy, freezing June, but he has a favourite bookstore and a favourite bar and a favourite place for gelato and three favourite places for tea.  So at least that’s something.  

And despite his grander aspirations, he’s surprised by how much he’s starting to love his job.  There’s just something soothing about going to work, as hectic and crazed as it may be sometimes.  He still knows it’s a means to an end on some level – to get his name out there, do things he can make sound impressive on his resume, pay the bills while he furiously constructs his own worlds in his free time.  But he dreams about formatting, about alignments and insets, and it’s weirdly comforting, all that organization.  All that precision in the midst of the wild creative tangents his brain runs off on.  It helps him feel grounded.  

He was deliberately vague and open to everything in his interview, and conceded that he was fine with working with the online version of the paper – but he _loves_ print media, couldn’t not wax poetic about it even though he couldn’t tell if he was gaining favor or digging his own grave.  "It’s a tactile thing,“ he’d said, gesturing with his hands until he finally had to sit on them to keep still.  "Just the way a paper feels between your fingers, that crinkle when you turn a page and smooth everything out and fold it in half, the way it smells, like rooms of old books but more immediate, it just makes you crave coffee and a warm blanket and time to do the crossword, and I don’t even like coffee …”

He drank a lot in his hotel room that night to erase the memory of his own idiocy.  Especially when he had to admit that he doesn’t have experience at a paper outside of the bit of work he did at Fresno City College (for The Rampage – he still cringes a little to say it out loud.  The _Rampage_.  It definitely never lived up to its name – more like a sedate Sunday stroll, maybe).  But he knows even there his work was solid, and they must have liked something, because two days later he had a job.  He’s started wondering idly if he would stay at the paper even if he got a book contract tomorrow.  He could probably manage both.

Chris has at times been accused of being acerbic; cold.  He likes to think he’s focused and driven.  He’s not going to step on people to get where he’s going, but if they’re in the way or dragging their heels, then fuck.  He’ll definitely step around them.  The world has enough martyrs.

It’s that tendency in Darren that rankles him, among all the other things about Darren that are irritating.  He seems to always be rescheduling, accommodating, bending over backwards to let someone else have a piece of his time or his talents.  He gives up prime performing spots all the time, and turns his solo gigs into full band performances so his friends can get exposure too.  And Chris gets it, he does, to a point – but Darren seems to self-sabotage to a point of madness.  To look the part of the admirable hero, the most reliable friend, the aw-shucks humble boy next door with a heart of gold.  But Chris has been around enough by now to know that no one is actually that nice without a motive or an agenda.  He doesn’t know what angle Darren’s playing but there’s definitely something.

But these people – this life.  It amazes him every day, and like it or not Darren is ingrained in that.  Terrifyingly amazing Lauren and Joey, so sweet and goofily handsome and hilarious – even if he tends to make more fart jokes than Chris can support in good conscience.  There’s Brian Holden, and Meredith, and Julia – who seems smart in a very intimidating way and marginally sane – and Other Joe and … Chris’s head swims.  There are so many of them, and Darren is one of them, and he’s trying to learn to reconcile how much he loves these people with how much Darren can sometimes get under his skin, because he knows it’s still all worth it.  When his phone dings with reminders for two parties, a gig and a script he promised he’d look over for them – even if he doesn’t have real theatre experience, the fact that he’s a writer and will sing if he’s drunk enough apparently are all the qualifications they need.  It’s been five weeks of Tim, and it’s exclusive and feels excitingly and frighteningly like something that might become a Thing.  He might get more than a square inch of article space in the next week – there’s talk of it, at least, based on what he’s been doing, so he’s obviously doing something right.

This is what it’s like to be a successful adult with a social life.  He tries to explain it to his mom one day, the wonder of it, filtering it heavily to fit PG terms.  She says she’s happy for him but she doesn’t seem to understand – seems if anything a little hurt by his more-than-implication that Clovis is a hellhole.  But as accepting as she is of him – as both his parents are – they have never been able to understand what it was like to be a kid who would never pass as anything other than who he was.  How it ate at him, that horrible mixture of defiance and guilt and shame and pride.  How it still does sometimes.  One day he hopes he’ll talk about how it helped to shape him; how adversity and loneliness formed the basis of what he writes and who he’s ultimately writing it for.  But he’ll never say any of it was worth it.  Fuck tragic inspiration.  Fuck being some fairytale victim.  He pulled himself through it, mostly, but he never wanted to and shouldn’t have had to.  

So he goes to Pride in style, losing his tank top early and taking pictures of everything and drinking probably too much and letting himself be painted with glitter.  Tim stands with him and Chris takes a picture of them with a rainbow flag caught in a breeze behind them and for a moment he’s covered in goosebumps and completely overwhelmed.  Lauren and Meredith join them, and some of Tim’s friends, and soon they’re a noisy collection heading from bar to bar, drunk on the shared spirit of acceptance and love.  Even Darren seems to shine brighter, though apparently he just split from a girl Chris never even met, and is happily planting kisses on everyone who stands still long enough.  Chris watches him dancing with Julia, falling all over each and laughing hysterically as they try to sing along to some remix of a remix of what might have once been a Ke$ha track.  It makes Chris smile.

“So, gorgeous,” Tim says behind him – Chris didn’t even realize he’d left, and turns to meet him with a smile.  Tim lifts the empty glass from Chris’s hand and replaces it with a fresh drink.  “I have a proposition for you.”

“Hmm?”  He sways closer, ready to redirect the energy and adrenaline of the day down a different path.  Tim slides both hands down his lower back to cup his ass and draw him closer – they are clearly on the same page now.  He loops his arms around Tim’s neck.  He is so handsome – that classic sunny California blond who looks as if he should spend his days surfing and trying to save whales, but Tim actually works in IT at things Chris doesn’t really comprehend but finds impressive anyway.  “Yes to whatever you’re going to ask me, as long as it starts in the next ten minutes.”  

“Careful what you agree to there,” Tim says, and there’s hesitance in his smile, but there’s also a spark in his eyes that piques Chris’s interest.

“Oh yeah?  Try me.”

“So I’m thinking,” Tim breathes in his ear, making him shiver.  “Why don’t we take this gay old opportunity, pun totally intended, to pick up a spare tonight?”

Chris stares at him, feels his breath catch short.  “As in …“

“As in,” he confirms.  “There’s a ton of hot prospects here, but if you want something closer to home I’m thinking maybe your friend Darren?  There’s something about bi guys – especially after they get out of a thing with a girl, they’re usually ready to go wild for cock for a bit.”  He nods at Darren, who is now dancing much more seriously and closely with some guy who looks like an Abercrombie model.  “Hell, the way he’s playing we could do four.”

“You …” The room is spinning, and Chris closes his eyes against it – opens them again when he realizes how much worse that is.  Everything that has just come out of Tim’s mouth might as well have been in Mandarin.  “You want to have a threesome?  Tonight.”  He tries to mentally catch up.  He’s not exactly morally opposed, and he has definitely thought about it in the abstract.  But when he imagined it he always pictured it with strangers, or at least just casual acquaintances – nothing involving a partner, or his own circle of friends.  To say nothing of Darren being involved.    

“If you don’t want to, it’s totally all right,” Tim says, watching him closely.  “But I’d kinda want to know if it’s a not-right-now no, or a never-ever no.  ‘Cause that might be a thing?”

“What kind of thing?”  This is too many things at once, and at the stupidest possible time.  Three minutes ago Chris was high on possibility and lust and joy and what he might have called the beginning of love.

“I mean, not a deal-breaker thing necessarily,” Tim says, shrugging, “but sharing my toys has never been a problem for me, and I also don’t consider you _my_ toy.  … And I’m not yours,” he says carefully.  “I guess given the way we met I thought that was kind of a given for both of us?”

Chris breathes deeply.  “No, that wasn’t exactly a given for me.”

“Oh.”  Tim makes a face that is probably supposed to be apologetic.  “Fuck, Chris – I’m sorry.  But I’m also 25 and living the dream here, and so are you.  I’m not looking to tie myself to anyone right now.  Maybe not ever?  You know how I feel about heteronormative bullshit.”

“No I don’t know that, because you’ve never said it!” Chris says, pitching his voice above the pounding music.  “And I don’t want to get married tomorrow either, I just also wasn’t ruling out the possibility that a good thing could become an even better thing.”  Fuck feeling guilty again, because so fucking what if he does want some parts of that straight people dream future?  It’s his fucking right to want it or not, that’s what this whole thing is about, isn’t it?

“Look, can we talk this out when we’re both sober and not yelling at each other in the middle of this sweatfest?  At least go home and go to bed?  We can still turn the night around.”  In his peripheral vision he sees Darren making out with his dance partner, pressed close in the middle of the floor.  Headed for the kind of night Chris expected for himself.

Chris looks up and blinks back the wetness that’s gathering against his will in his eyes – because fuck that, too.  “I think I am going to go home and go to bed.  Alone.  Goodnight, Tim.”

—

Darren stops coming around when only Chris is home.  Waves hi to him when they’re in a room together, but in a distracted way, like an afterthought.  Chris wonders if he’s dating the guy from the club now, but doesn’t ask.  It’s weird to miss it, but he sort of does; he supposes there’s some element of Darren’s magnetism that holds true.  Or else he’s just vulnerable and a little adrift since things ended so unexpectedly with Tim – and a little offended on Darren’s behalf for him almost getting volunteered into a threesome – which Chris is trying not to think of in any respect, to avoid further headache.  So Chris is a little nicer, makes the effort – asks HIM about the weather once – and they come to some sort of unspoken peace.

It’s a Tuesday night and Darren and Lauren are both singing at an ironic dive bar, and because Lauren promised to break Chris’s legs if he skips again because of work, he does go.  He nurses one drink for two hours, trying to stay as sober as possible.  The place is packed – he was sure he’d met most of Lauren and Joey’s enormous circle of friends by this point, but maybe that was just because they weren’t all in town, and certainly their apartment couldn’t possibly fit half of these people.  There are more of them than he can count.  

“Michigan,” Lauren says, as if that explains everything.  It’s what she always says.  Obviously college culture in Michigan is some magical, mystical, movie-ready kind of deal where everyone is everyone’s uncomplicated best friend.  Certainly nothing Chris himself experienced.

Darren is clean-shaven and looks very put together – he might even have trimmed down that mop of curls, it’s hard to tell in the low light – though even their new carefully polite relationship doesn’t get him more than a cursory hello, an awkward half-smile, and a hasty exit.  

Then he gets up on stage, and again it’s as if someone flipped a switch – he’s suddenly a natural charmer, and he sings like a dream, and Chris has honestly never seen anyone look as comfortable in his life.  He crosses his arms and deliberately doesn’t react as Darren’s eyes catch and stay on his.  Darren looks away first, but he doesn’t fumble a note.

After the show Darren is swarmed, his friends but also people who arrived partway through his set and are flooding him with praise and questions, hanging on his every word.  Chris turns back to the bar and orders a double.

Moments later there’s a crash and he can hear Darren apologizing.  A pretty blond right next to him now has a low-cut shirt soaked through with what was Darren’s whiskey – unsurprisingly she does not look too upset about it.  “That’s a whole new tactic,” Chris sighs to no one in particular, and when the bartender gives him a strange look he decides it’s probably time for a bathroom break.

He’s washing his hands when he realizes he’s not alone in the room, and turns to find Darren bent over one of the sinks.  He’s flushed, splashing water on his face.

“Are you okay?” Chris asks slowly.  

He startles.  Which is so … uncharacteristic.  "Oh, f– hi, Chris.  Yeah, I’m great.  Just made a bit of a mess, that’s all.“

"Is this about earlier?  I mean, the bar has lots of glasses …”

Darren furrows his brow before breaking into a thin smile.  "No, it’s not that.  I just get kind of – I’m not very good at this.  Socializing?  New people.  Mostly new people, and I’m super sober.  I actually don’t know half of the people out there, which is pretty cool right?  Crowds are getting bigger.  I mean it’s definitely cool, sometimes it just kinda creeps up on me I guess, not being good at it.“  

"Oh.”  Chris honestly has no idea what to say to that, because … “wait, what? You’re nervous about people?  You.  You’re really not drunk?  Or on something a bit depressing right now?”  He smiles to back it up, because even a little drunk himself he knows there is no one more confident, no one more obnoxiously and cheerfully social from minute one than Darren.  

But Darren’s smile has disappeared, and if anything looks like he’s been let down.  Not a power Chris was aware he still possessed over him, if he’d ever had it.  “No,” he says finally, looking away.  “I don’t know why I thought you – anyway.  Not drunk.”

“Really?  Um.  Are you – I mean, it can’t be – wait, what about me, can I – do something, or –“  

“No,” he says again, “I don’t think so.  Thanks anyway.”  He straightens up, pushes his hair from his face and leaves.

"You’re welcome?”  Chris stares after him for a few moments after he leaves, not at all sure what just transpired.  Darren’s hands were shaking when he grabbed for the door.

Chris hangs around long past when everyone else heads off on the next step of their night of celebrating.  The bar is emptying and he still sits alone, trying to decide his next move.  Darren is somewhere else in the city, probably being sweet and weird and unpredictable and lighting up from the inside on someone else’s words.  The past weeks push into his mind against his will – how often Darren has faltered in front of him.  How he made that happen.  But it’s not Darren walking away that sticks itself to him and won’t let go – it’s that look in his eyes that preceded it.  Hope.


	4. Chapter 4

Chris doesn’t mean to fixate.  Really.  It just happens.  

“Does Darren get … stage fright?”  He blurts this to Joey one day over breakfast – in fairness, he’s not awake enough to get the wording right.  In secondary fairness, he had restless sleep in the first place because this was bugging the shit out of him.

“Are you wasted?” Joe touches his forehead once he’s realized Chris isn’t joking.  Chris starts to say that’s checking for a temperature, not any kind of intoxication, but gives it up as a headache avoided.  “Darren was pretty much born on a stage.  If anyone would bring him groceries up there he’d built a blanket fort and never leave.”  

Chris leaves it at that – for now.  But he still isn’t satisfied that’s the whole truth.

…

Finally fed up with driving back and forth and supposedly unwilling to impose further on his (obviously saint-like) parents, Darren finds a place in the city and moves in with Nick.  To celebrate, they throw an enormous party.  Chris tries to keep a close eye on Darren – it feels weirdly like being on some kind of stalker-y assignment – but gets distracted after his fifth beer by some friend of a friend of a friend of Nick’s named Kevin, a very good kisser who is intent on dragging Chris off to the nearest bedroom.  

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize –” Kevin pushes in behind him as Darren just blinks, sitting on the bed looking a little drunk, but alone. Well, not alone – with his guitar.  

“Uh, did you want me to leave, or …”

“Yeah please,” says Kevin decisively, at the same time as Chris says “No, it’s fine …”  

As Chris turns to make his position on this clear to Kevin, Darren gets up and pushes past them.  “I was done, it’s fine,” he says.  He never ever looks right at Chris anymore, but he does touch Chris’s arm as he’s leaving – just barely.  “Be safe, have fun, all that jazz.”

Kevin hollers a thanks as Darren retreats and his mouth is on Chris’s neck before he knows what’s happening, and god, Chris is so not in the mood for this anymore, if he ever was.  He pulls back and holds Kevin physically at arm’s length.  

Kevin leaves the room – and the party – five minutes later, muttering viciously to himself about Chris being a cocktease.  Darren is in the tiny kitchen, his guitar safely resting in the corner beside him.  He looks up as Chris walks out.

“Well, he was an asshole,” Chris says bracingly.  

“You okay?” Darren hands him a glass of water that was probably his own.

Chris bites back on his instinctive reply, all the irritation and misplaced shame and anger he’d like to direct at the nearest target, and actually thinks it over.  Because the nearest target is Darren, and Chris is willing to admit that he doesn’t deserve it.

“Thank you.  Yeah, I’ll be fine.”  Darren still looks concerned.  “Listen, about the other night …”

“No, don’t worry about it.  It’s done.  But for the record about tonight, you weren’t here for the tour and that was actually my bedroom.”

Chris winces.  “Uh.  Gross, I am … really sorry.  So … you’re up next?”  Darren takes the uneasy transition in the conversation with grace and just nods.  “I’m gonna go get a seat, then.”

“Cool.  And don’t worry about it.  See you later, Chris.”

“Bye,” he echoes.  He watches Darren head to the makeshift stage – a corner of the living room cleared of its furniture – and accepts a seat beside Lauren as she waves him into it.  

She loops an arm around his back and studies him in that piercing, perceptive way that alcohol never seems to dull.  “Rough night?  I saw what’s-his-face stomp out of here.”

“Just a rough ten minutes.”  He shrugs.  “Not like I was exactly invested in that.”

“Still.”      

“Lauren, do you ever feel like you’re – steps, just a few steps away from everything you’ve been looking for, and you just don’t know how to take them?”

“Oh, that’s more than a rough ten minutes, kiddo.”  He leans his head on hers as she cuddles closer, which isn’t exactly comfortable but is comforting, and that’s trade-off he’s willing to make.  “But yes.  You gotta figure out how to build your bridges, that’s all.”  She pauses and looks up at him.  “And where you want them to lead.”

Chris smiles, but doesn’t respond as Meredith grabs the seat to his other side, and soon he’s surrounded by people he loves.  Lauren heckles Darren as he climbs onto the stage and the room laughs, and Chris closes his eyes and breathes it all in.

…

It’s two days before Thanksgiving, it’s been a long, exhausting, stupid day and Chris is ready to tear his hair out.  He overslept, his hairdryer broke, he was late enough seeing and responding to an email from his boss that he almost rendered the “time-sensitive” part of it moot, and his subsequent interview with a restaurant owner yielded him one-word answers that he’s going to have to be a genius to turn into an actual story.  And at the restaurant he was improbably and completely delayed by a woman he is sure is Darren’s current girlfriend having a dramatic meltdown at her server – which he bookmarks in his brain on the “true” side of whether or not Darren is more random trouble than he’s worth.  Not that he’s been thinking about Darren enough lately to be making such a list.  Definitely not.

He’s on his fourth tea of the day and reaching the point where he’s not sure his words make sense anymore when Darren barrels into the apartment, out of breath and bright-eyed.  "Get your asses dressed up, I just scored SWANK dinner plans!“  He looks around the apartment before his eyes settle on Chris, buried in blankets on the couch, suddenly aware of how pieces of his hair are falling over his glasses and that he not only hasn’t showered yet, but forgot to change out of his pajama pants earlier.

He lifts a hand in weak greeting, feeling every ounce of the awkwardness in the room and tamping down on how absurdly nice it is to see a familiar, friendly face today.  "Hi?  No one else is home, sorry.”

“Oh.”  Darren looks perplexed.  "But Lolo said she was off today, and Joe was supposed to pick up an early shift at the bar and be home by now?“

"Lauren (Chris will never call her ‘Lolo’ unless he’s spectacularly drunk) went out with her boyfriend, I think he made plans for a hotel or something and she –” he grimaces “– talked a lot in way too much detail about how he needs to learn to give her multiple orgasms this time or she’s going to drown him in the bathtub.  But I’m not supposed to tell anybody that, so … pretend I didn’t tell you that.”

Darren seems less distressed than Chris feels, and just nods thoughtfully. “Fair. She’s had to draw diagrams for dudes before.  I think she’s at the end of her rope.  Joe?”

“Someone was sick, Joey’s pulling a double.”

“So …”

“So you’ll have to find some of your fourteen thousand other friends to take to a swank dinner,” Chris says flatly.  It’s hard to pretend it doesn’t sting a bit that he’s not even an option anymore. On some level he knows it’s unfair, if not completely hypocritical.  Some level way, deep down that he also seems to be thinking about more and more these days.

“Did you, um.”  Darren squints at him, shuffling from one foot to another.  He’s already dressed – very nicely, now that Chris studies him properly, expensive-looking deep red shoes and dark jeans and a crisp white button-up that sits stark and inviting against his golden skin.  He fingers the sunglasses hanging from the open collar.  "You’re still welcome to join me?  A guy from one of the venues I’m playing next week gave me a gift card to Amarena, this amazing Italian place with the best boar pasta you’ll ever eat.“

"I’ve never been much for being a back-up plan,” Chris says.  He hears himself and in his mind he adds ‘acerbically.’  Well, sometimes it’s warranted.  And sometimes writing into a delirious haze means narration starts up in his brain.  God, he really does need a break.  "And can’t you just go with your girlfriend?  Who, by the way,” he perks up as he remembers the events of today, “is a total jerk.“

Darren stares at him so long, mouth trying to form words, that Chris briefly panics that he might have suddenly lost some hearing.  “Wait, okay.  I just – back up. I don’t have a girlfriend, so who’s my girlfriend?”

“Sarah?  Is her name Sarah?  The redhead you’ve been bringing everywhere, I ran into her while I was on an assignment today and she was being a complete diva to her server.”  Not that Chris has been actively noticing who Darren is bringing everywhere when the group gets together.  They’ve just been … noticeable.  Together.  Heads close and laughing a lot and sparkling eyes, the whole nauseating deal.

Darren rubs a hand over his face and shakes his head, comprehension clearly dawning.  “Her name is Clara, and I’ve known her since grade school, and I’m not dating her.”

“So you’re just … sleeping with her repeatedly?” Chris asks dubiously.  

Darren takes a step back.  “Oh my god.  Not that it’s any of your business, but Clara just moved back out here from Rhode Island, so we’ve been catching up a bit.”  Chris must telegraph his disbelief, because Darren adds, “man, she’s a _lesbian_.”

“Oh.”  Chris struggles for an out, but there clearly isn’t one.  He’d like to be defiant and defensive, make his case, but he can feel the heat creeping up his neck and spreading across his cheeks. “I’m sorry?”  

“And she’s a great girl, but her aunt’s really sick and she might not make it and she just got dumped in the shittiest way, so maybe her temper’s short, and you know what, not only are you not one to talk about a short temper, but her life’s definitely not your problem or your business.”  He looks as if he’d like to storm out but plants his feet and crosses his arms, looking as serious as Chris has ever seen him.  “Fuck, Chris.  I thought we were back on the upswing and it was all water under the bridge and whatever, but I guess we’re gonna have to do this now.  Of fucking course I was going to ask you to dinner tonight with everybody else; you weren’t a back-up plan, you just put words in my mouth as usual.  You’ve never been a back-up plan.  I just – I _liked_ you, you know?  You were never under any obligation to be into me – not as a friend, not as, god, whatever.”  He sighs.  “But you keep acting like I’m personally offending you by, by being around, by talking to you, by not talking to you, I’m too friendly, I’m an asshole, I’m fake  … sometimes you’re nice, usually you’re not … and I know you can’t have standards _that_ far off of mine, because if you don’t like Joe and Lopez and all those guys you’re a way better actor than I am–”

“Of course I d–”

“No, hang on, because you’re talking all over me all the fucking time.”  Chris feels pinned and suspended in time to absorb Darren’s sudden anger, and is horrified to realize how much he deserves it.  “And I don’t want this of all fucking things to be the way I keep more than five seconds of your attention, but here you go.  I liked you long past the point of it being a totally masochistic waste of my time.  And that night in the bar I told you something I really – I don’t tell a lot of people.  Because in that second I guess I was being an idiot, fuck, as usual!  And I trusted you.  Can you just at least respect that I’m – you don’t have to buy it,” he says, and he looks weary now.  “I can’t change anything about how you think about me.  But me getting uncomfortable, whatever, it’s not a huge thing but it is a real thing, okay?  If you could at least not blaze me down about that along with everything else.  I would really appreciate that.”  He lifts his eyes to Chris’s before they drop immediately away, and Chris tries to keep up – he thought Darren had meant it when he said none of that was a big deal to him and to forget it.  He should have known better.  “I really don’t like confrontation either,” he huffs a laugh, “but at least it’s good practice.  I’m worse with you, sometimes it barely gets better at all, and it’s been fucking me up like – you have no idea.  But then I realized that it’s because I totally can’t predict you.  It’s like eggshells all the time and there’s no making coping plans for that.  And I know you’re a good person.  Somewhere in there you are.  You’re kind and funny and yeah sometimes you’re sarcastic, but not in a mean way.  And I love the way you write, because the way you write, I can tell that I love the way you think, which I can also tell when you’re talking about something you care about.  When you’re talking to anyone who isn’t me, anyway.   And you care about people and you give them second and third chances all the time.  And you don’t owe me anything, but I just don’t understand what it is about me.  That you can’t even, even _tolerate_ me.”

In the ensuing silence Darren blinks hard and then does leave.  He doesn’t slam the door, just shuts it behind him gently.  All resignation.

Chris stares at the door long after it closes behind Darren, breathing and blinking hard.  

He thinks he knows now, with horrible clarity, exactly where the bridge he wants to build would lead him.  Too bad he just burned it down before he even started.


	5. Chapter 5

(Artwork for this work/chapter by the amazing [heukii!](http://heukii.tumblr.com/post/130538441404/darren-is-a-revelation-of-course-he-is)) 

Chris heads back to Clovis for Thanksgiving, welcoming the chance to clear his head even if he’s dreaded everything else that comes with it.  He geared himself up for his return, but instead of feeling oppressed in it now he only feels out of place – it’s still cloying, but it’s lost its ability to make him fearful beneath that.  He’s there only for his family – if they moved tomorrow he would never return.  There’s something weirdly freeing in that; growing up he felt as if every day was a battle, and now he feels as if he’s finally won it.

He has a strange relationship with judgement – he knows he rushes to it too quickly sometimes, but he also has always felt the weight of it at his back.  He tries to admit it when he’s wrong, unless he can cover it up – and he’s sort of reluctant to get into it, but with his group of friends in San Francisco, he feels as if he truly has the fresh start he craved through high school.  He doesn’t have to tell them his worst faults, his most ridiculous mistakes – even if he’s constantly fighting not to repeat them.  

If he was really going to unload, he’d tell them that despite how far he’s come, sometimes he still lets his insecurities and that lingering desire to fit in override his good judgment.  That he struggles constantly with reconciling how much he loves his parents with how increasingly upsetting he finds their politics, and that his commitment to neutrality falls to the wayside somewhere around how accidentally hurtful it’s become for him.  That almost everything he is passionate about now he has at some point in the past rejected and refused with equal passion – he could never tell his current friends, whose depth of obsession makes his own look mild, but he even refused to read Harry Potter until the fourth book was out because he didn’t believe in the hype.  

He knows it’s ridiculous; it’s a fine line between trusting his own judgement and instincts and being discerning without being unfair.  He’s learned the value of impartiality, but he’s also learned that gut instinct is vital.  Where someone like Darren falls on that spectrum … he can’t tell.  He doesn’t know if he wants to tell, because he suspects he already knows.  

He paces around his old room, touching the writing awards and looking at the kid he was in all of the pictures – something pinched around his eyes even when he was his happiest.  He has so much more in his grasp now – he just doesn’t want to be wrong.  He’s always been sure in himself, but he’s also always felt the pressure to impress and to follow – to be worthy of the people he finds interesting, but never quite trusting his own voice among them.  He’s never sure he knows how to do himself justice.  He becomes attracted to people who seem to feel they’re better than him, maybe are smarter than him, aren’t necessarily nice about it, and he works to prove them wrong about him, because the alternative is that he’s the one making mistake after mistake.  

It all circles back to Darren, as so many of his thoughts do these days.  Darren just isn’t like anyone else he knows, Darren who it seems is just struggling along like everyone else; who is usually just being loud to be brave.  Chris is starting to wonder if his determination to reinvent and buck his own trends has meant that he’s now only standing in his own way.

…

Chris returns to the city to find out that Darren has scored a gig opening for someone at the Fillmore, which must be what Darren was referencing that disastrous day he came by.  Darren never tells him – Chris has barely seen him in two weeks – but even Chris knows it’s an enormous deal, and when Joey asks him in passing if he wants a ticket, he doesn’t even consider it.  He just says yes.  But he doesn’t tell Darren – doesn’t really tell anyone.  Joey asks if he needs a pair and looks a little surprised when he says no.  Given Chris’s determination to be present but distracted every other time Darren’s been playing, Chris understands Joey’s reaction.

He’s nervous all day.  He thinks it’s for Darren’s sake, but really, Darren has this – he was listening, and performing isn’t an issue.  He’s nervous about what it might mean, to give 100% of his attention to Darren.  If he’s honest with himself – and, ugh, at this point it’s unavoidable – he’s been working very hard to avoid that very thing.

He arranges to arrive with Lauren, Meredith, Brian, and Joey, crowded into a cab.  The group is uncharacteristically quiet, and Chris is sort of humbled, and honoured, if not a little bit shamed to be included in this.  They know this is a huge step for Darren.  Meredith’s arms are full of an enormous bouquet for him, complete with a card all of them signed.  Chris threw in on them as well, but decided not to leave commentary, just signing his name and a smiley face.

If Darren has any feeling about Chris being there he doesn’t show it.  He’s looking around as people file in and accepts his flowers with a bright smile.  Lauren hugs him tightly.  Joey finds the rest of the group and they encircle Darren, the kind of uncomplicated love that they give each other so freely.  It makes Chris’s heart ache a little.    

…

Darren is a revelation.  Of course he is.  He strips himself bare every time he performs, but Chris can see the extra meaning this has for him, on a big stage in his hometown, and his eyes look wet when he thanks his parents and his brother and all of his friends for loving and supporting and inspiring him.  Chris breathes, and breathes, and breathes.  

He debates leaving it – it’s an exciting night, and he doesn’t want to bring it down – but he also doesn’t want to bring it down by pretending it away.  At the very least he owes Darren honesty, and an apology, and the chance to receive both in private, if he wants them.  The way they’ve been going, he might not get that chance again for a while.  So he waits for the crowds to clear out of Darren’s dressing room and gets clearance to head back, steeling himself to knock.  Darren is sitting back on the couch, staring at the ceiling.  He doesn’t look euphoric anymore so much as exhausted – unsurprising, given the dozens of admirers Chris watched streaming out of backstage.  Darren would have given every one of them a sincere and earnest chunk of his time.  Because that’s what he does.

He closes the door behind him.  “Hi.  Okay, tell me what I can do.”

“Go away?” Darren suggests.  There isn’t the anger behind it that Chris expects and truthfully, probably deserves.

“Aside from that.  I just got here.”  He exhales and calls up a smile – he didn’t notice when it became so easy to do that for Darren.  “Cold cloth?  Water?  Snack?  Beer?  Okay, apparently I can only think of food things, and beer’s probably a bad idea.  Um, what else was there.  Deep breathing exercises?”

Darren raises his head slowly.  “Why does it sound like you’ve been … researching something?”

“Because I have,” Chris says, and when it’s clear a request is not coming, he pours a glass of water and hands it to Darren before stepping back, resting his hip against the beat-up desk in the room.  “Look, I know we’ve been rocky –“

“To say the fucking least,” Darren interjects.

“Yeah, I know.  And I know I didn’t – I was surprised, and I was a jerk, and when you’re telling people serious things about yourself the last thing you want is them to not take you seriously, or be a jerk about it, or to continue to be a pointless jerk.  And I’ve been a jerk to you about all kinds of stuff, and I just – really wanted to say sorry.”

Darren eyes him.  “You just said ‘jerk’ a gillion times.  I thought you were a writer.”

“Well, you just said ‘gillion,’ so I still win?”

The faint smile drops from Darren’s face as he turns serious.  “You get that I haven’t really told _anybody_.  I definitely didn’t mean to tell you.”

“… Ouch.  But fair.  I guess what I’m asking is if I can get another chance.  I’m not always a huge jerk, I swear.  And your set tonight was …” he searches for words, still internally reeling a little.  “You’re always great, but you were really amazing.  And I think knowing that sometimes you’re doing that and feeling like this, or using that to get through feeling like this …” He waits for Darren to look up and meet his eyes.  “You’re very brave.  And it’s not like this is something you can help happening to you.  You don’t have anything to be self-conscious about.”

Darren is still staring at him, those huge, honey-sweet eyes full of confusion and wariness.  “Chris.  Okay, I need you to know a few things.  One, I’m not a charity case, so please don’t be condescending.  Two, I’m honestly – not trying to downplay anything and _I’m_ sorry that I said this was about you, because that wasn’t fair either.  It’s just a situational thing, it’s actually relatively mild and relatively under control.  Three …” He cracks a broad smile as if he can’t help it.  “I know you kind of acknowledged this already, but if you’re going to start researching I suggest you start with places that don’t suggest you booze me up to chill me out.”  

Chris’s fingers have turned white with how hard he’s been gripping his own arms, wrapped around himself as he listened to what Darren had to say.  He lets go with the sudden force of his laughter.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say beer, it just came out.  I’m nervous!”

“Chris.”  Darren sits up and leans forward, elbows on his knees, “I think we need to start over.  Like all the way over.  Like ‘hi, I’m Darren,’ over.  We’ve just been so –“  

The thought is interrupted by a rapid pounding on the door that makes both of them jump a mile.

“Ugh.”  Darren smile drops as he pushes a hand through his sweaty hair and makes a face at Chris.  “I am so tapped out on visitors tonight, is there any way –”

But Chris already has the door cracked open to peer out.  Behind him he hears Darren scrambling to his left and hiding out of sight.  “Oh hi!  I really wanted to see Darren?”  The girl is one step away from snapping her gum, Chris thinks, very literally twirling her long dark hair and bouncing a little on her sparkly-nailed toes.  “Maybe you could help me?  Just for a couple of minutes …” She actually flutters her lashes.  She’s trying to flirt her way past him.  Chris opens his mouth and can feel the thirteen things he wants to say crowd into his throat all at once – for starters, how unobservant can this kid be …  
But she is a kid, seventeen at the very most, and if she thinks he has actual pull and isn’t just literally standing in a doorway and hoping for the best, he might as well use it to his advantage.  

“How did you get back here?  Never mind, because Darren can’t see you right now, sorry.  No visitors.”

“Oh no, is he all right?”

“No, yeah, he’s fine.”  Chris crosses his arms – even in her heels he still has a few inches on her.  He feels like he’s looming.  Three other girls have appeared behind her in the hall, scurrying in a way that tells Chris they’ve all managed to sneak back here and will skitter like kittens at the first threat.  “He’s just all talked out, you know –“

“We can talk to him!  He doesn’t have to say anything!”

“Well it’s not just that, he’s … uh, naked right now.  Stark naked.  You know how it is.  Musicians,” he whispers, aiming for exasperated and fond (and totally succeeding, if he does say so himself).  He hears Darren’s very quiet, incredulous snort behind him.  

“Oh my _god_ ,” the girl breathes, eyes widening almost comically as she turns to flail at her friends.  “Naked!  He’s so– ” Chris is pretty sure she’s going to say something along the lines of ‘dreamy,’ but she tries to crane to see around him anyway, cowering back a little as Chris nudges forward a little further, frowns and shakes his head.  “Okay, okay.  Tell him Alicia was here?”  She ignores the protests and names of her other friends as they clamour to be recognized as well.

“Absolutely,” Chris says, closing and locking the door even as she yells “thank you oh my god I LOVE YOU DARREN!”

Darren is laughing silently, helplessly, almost bent in half with it.  “’He can’t see you, he’s NAKED RIGHT NOW.’  You are the worst liar, and I sound like a fucking creep!”  He wipes his eyes.  “Oh my god.”

“Don’t worry, your devoted child stalkers will always be creepier.”

“Alicia,” Darren says glumly, sobering a little.  “She comes to every show she’s legal for, which at least usually rules out bars.  I think she threw underwear once.  I ducked and they hit Theo.”  He looks to Chris solemnly, and the gaze lasts a beat before they both burst into hysterical laughter again.

“Ahh, oh god,” Chris gasps, clutching his stomach as he collapses onto the couch.  “This was such a great night.”  He rolls his head sideways to look at Darren and smiles.  “Thank you.  For all of it.”

“I,” Darren says, watching as he scuffs the toe of his shoe through the carpet, smile lowered, “didn’t do shit except sing as usual.  But thank you too.”

–

The next day Chris receives cookies from his favourite bakery ten minutes after he gets to his cubicle.  The card reads _‘For my hero, the terrible liar.’ – D_

He stuffs them directly into his desk drawer at the curious looks from his coworkers, and texts Darren. _‘Thank you!  :)  You should know that I’m also a terrible sharer.  Terrible at everything really.’_

His phone dings immediately. _‘Oh I don’t think that’s true.’_

It takes him two hours to stop smiling.

…

“I totally agree with you, about recycling complacency,” Darren says one day out of the blue, over his shoulder as he’s heading out of the apartment.  He’s back in the habit of stopping by, but usually when Joey is three minutes or less away from being ready to go out with him.  Baby steps, it seems.  Today Joey had some kind of razor malfunction – Chris doesn’t ask because he’s sure he doesn’t want to know how Joe uses a razor and still has facial hair that looks like he couldn’t pick one out of a lineup of personal care products.  Then he thinks about it a little more and really _really_ doesn’t want to know – throws popcorn at Lauren when she laughs at his face.  

Meanwhile Chris’s brain fights to catch up to what Darren is talking about.  “You – what?”

“Your article …” Darren is frowning like Chris is the crazy one.  

“My – oh!”  He can’t help but continue to blink stupidly at Darren though, because understanding and understanding are two different things in this case.  “You read that piece?”  Darren nods.  “Can I ask why?”

“Because I know a guy writing for the Chronicle and I like keeping up with the cool stuff people I know are doing?”  He scratches a hand through those curls, which Chris stopped wanting to shear off, somewhere along the line.  “Isn’t that … what people do?”

“You read an article about recycling program complacency,” Chris reminds him, “in a city that’s kind of nuts about recycling already.”

“But you wrote it,” Darren insists.  

“Well, that puts my readership at you and my mom.”

Joey bursts out of the bathroom with dramatic flair, interrupting this futile argument that Lauren is still watching like a riveting tennis match.  “I’m ready!”  He grabs a coat and looks expectantly at Darren, who has paused with his hand on the door and clearly has something more to say.  

“What happened to self-deprecation being a sign of tacky false modesty?” he asks, walking out of the room with an arch little grin, so obviously proud of himself for the dig it’s disgusting.

“MATCH POINT,” Lauren yells as the door closes, and Chris throws a pillow at her.

…

Darren stops by late one Wednesday morning, and before Chris can open his mouth to say that no one else is home – the usual refrain – Darren just smiles and says, “I know.  I came by to hang out with you.  If you’re free, and if you’re up for it.”  He sets down his guitar – his constant companion – and holds up his hands.  “And no pressure if you’re not.”

“Oh!  Oh, then yeah, I’m totally free.”  He’s actually in the middle of a critical scene that’s finally taking shape for him, but he clicks his laptop shut without hesitation.  “Um, but what about Brian–?”  Chris has been doing his part by trying to keep Brian in his bedroom when he knows Darren’s coming by – no great sacrifice, as it’s just another excuse for him to sleep on Chris’s dressers and pretend it’s allowed.  Right now though, Brian is sprawled in the middle of the couch as if he owns it.

“Meds!”  Darren rattles a bottle in his jacket pocket.  “No more making me sneeze, fatty cat,” he sing-songs to an unimpressed-looking Brian, and Chris clears his throat.  “Excuse me.  Big-boned cat.”  Chris bites the inside of his cheek and nods.  

“Anyway, turning over new leaves, starting fresh, all that stuff.  Remember?”  He produces and hands a cup to Chris.  “Don’t worry, I live to learn in all areas of life.  It’s totally tea.”

“Thank you.  God, sorry, I can’t offer you anything, except … Diet Coke, and probably some stale granola bars.  There might be a head of lettuce.”

“So tempting,” Darren laughs, “but pass.”  He holds up a bottle of juice.  “I’m covered.”  They settle onto the couch together on either side of Brian, and as Chris is trying to decide which path to take to break the growing silence, Darren starts talking first – quickly, as if he wants to get it out.

“So I meant to come over to watch a movie or something, but I think it’s important for you to know that you’re not all wrong about me.  I kind of am an idiot; I’m interested in weird things and I do weird things and it’s not always easy for me to connect with people.  Especially new people.  Even if,” he says, holding up a hand, “people connect with me.  I know it looks like the same thing probably, but it’s not.  I get, uh.  Overwhelmed.”

“Anxious, right?”  Chris smiles.

Darren shrugs a shoulder, looking a little embarrassed.  “Call it whatever.  I never used to – I don’t know.  It just started happening sometimes in college.  While I was away it wasn’t bad at all, but since I’ve been back … I don’t know what the issue is, but I just don’t love being the center of attention.  Sometimes I deal with that by making myself the complete centre of attention … I just need to feel like I’m at least earning it or something?”

“I think I understand that,” Chris says slowly.  “It’s not the same thing at all but I’m not … I’ve never been the most popular guy.  I hit puberty really late, and now all of a sudden guys are interested in me, and I don’t even know how to handle it half the time.  Because they wouldn’t have given me a second look, before.”

“I bet you were adorable the whole time,” Darren says.  Chris snorts.

“Don’t feed me lines, please.”

“I would never,” Darren says, surprisingly serious.  

Chris squirms a little, happily.  “I know.  Okay, wait, so listen, now that you’re here and we’re talking about this, I read this thing on the internet –“

“This is so not going to end well,” Darren says.

“Shut up.  It’s called grounding?  For anxiety?”

“Chris.”  Darren again looks some unhappy kind of uncomfortable.  “What have you been – I can’t tell you enough how much I really don’t want or need you to, like, try to fix me –“

“I am definitely not trying to fix you!  Do I look like a miracle-worker?  No.”  It has the intended result of making Darren crack a smile again.  “I mean, okay, I do understand that this might seem … condescending?”  Darren nods.  “Right, but I promise that I only want to help if you want me to help.  I just thought this was kind of neat because you’re usually a whirlwind, it doesn’t have to only be for when you’re not feeling great.  And it made me feel better about the three hours of my life I lost on Tumblr the other day, because this means I got something useful out of it.”

“Tumblr.  Oh man, okay,” Darren sighs, pulling up to sit cross-legged.  “Lay it on me.  Grounding?”

Chris can’t hide his pleasure – that was easier than he thought.  “Okay!  So here’s what you do.  When you feel yourself freaking out, you look around the room.  You find one – wait no, hang on!”  He pulls it up on his phone again.  “You find five things.  Five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.”

“Oh.  Cool.”  Darren nods.  Because he’s Darren, this seems to make sense to him immediately.  His eyes scan the room; Chris can practically hear his brain whirring.

“Go ahead,” he says patiently.  “I know you want to practice.”

Something soft and surprised flickers across Darren’s face.  “Right, okay.  So five things I can see: the TV, the coffee table, Joey’s empty milk glass, and I know it’s his because I lived with him in college and he leaves them everywhere.  A stack of notepaper, and your laptop.  Four I can touch: my guitar,” he drops his hand to brush the chords, the level of comfort in the gesture making Chris smile.  “The couch, Brian – sorry buddy,” he amends, as he wakes Brian by petting him, “and this plastic bag.”  He picks it up from the floor beside his chair, peering in, pulling out a genuinely enormous box of condoms.  “Someone’s ambitious!”  He gives Chris an indiscernible look.  “Or has a pretty legendary weekend planned.”  

“Lauren,” Chris corrects him.  “I don’t usually Costco-shop for condoms.  Apparently the new guy did come through for her, and is … virile.”

“God damn,” Darren says, though he sounds impressed.  “All right, anyway, three things I can hear are the heater, those crazy birds on the window ledge, and,” he cocks his head, “I think my phone just died.”  He smiles.  “I smell …” He closes his eyes and inhales deeply before opening them again.  “Fresh air with the window open, which no offense is kind of stupid if you have the heat on, you should probably close that.  And … your cologne.”  He turns his head slightly towards Chris.  “Which I’ve probably never said, but always smells amazing.”

“Thanks,” Chris murmurs.  The air hangs heavy between them suddenly.  

“One thing I can taste …” Their eyes pull to each others’ like a flicked switch.  Chris doesn’t miss the way Darren’s gaze drops to his mouth, and he licks his lips reflexively.  

“Um.”  Darren visibly swallows.  “Apple juice,” he says, lifting the bottle in his hand, clearing his throat and taking a sip.  His eyes are still intent on Chris.  “And I think … I have a question for you.”


	6. Chapter 6

“Remember, this isn’t a date,” Darren says.  He’s standing in the apartment’s doorway, holding a bunch of flowers.

“I know, that’s the only reason I said yes.  Dates are pressure and expectations and for people who actually like each other.”  Chris accepts the flowers when Darren hands them over, a lovely colorful bouquet of red and orange and purple, with daisies and lilies and flowers Chris couldn’t name without looking them up.  His heart is fluttering ridiculously as he gets the flowers into water, and he’s sure he’s turned bright pink – thank god no one is home to witness this.  “And these are friendship flowers, I’m assuming?”

“I wouldn’t call us friends either,” Darren says airily.  Chris at least tries to hide his smile.  “I just found those on the side of the street on the way up here.  I’m betting somebody broke up mid-delivery.”  Darren looks especially nice, tight black slacks and a gorgeous, soft-looking plum sweater that Chris longs to touch.  Even his hair is marginally under control, although if Chris thought about it, he no longer minds when it isn’t.

“Mmhmm.  So can you tell me where we’re going on this not-date while we don’t talk to each other because of how much we can’t stand each other?”  He narrows his eyes.  “Hopefully somewhere with booze?  That would help with all the hatred.”

“Well guessed, Christopher.”

“Great, sounds classy,” Chris says.  They grin at each other like idiots.

…

Four hours later they are eating soggy French toast in a dive diner.

“Sober yet?” Darren asks, smiling.  It’s the fourth time he’s asked in an hour.

“I was never drunk,” Chris says primly.  

“Uh huh.  That’s not what you said an hour ago when you tried to lick my face.”

“I – DID NOT,” Chris yelps.  He can feel himself blushing.  Did he?  He thought about it, probably.  The jazz club was warm and the mojitos were amazing and Darren was just a little too close, everything he said into Chris’s ear to be heard over the music sending desire sparking through him.

“No, you did not.  But you looked like you wanted to.”

“Oh, screw you too.”  This is – weird, and crazy, and amazing, and when Chris really _is_ sober, he hopes he doesn’t regret whatever this could be.  “I’d never lick somebody who picked up flowers off the street for some guy he doesn’t even like.”

“Touché,” Darren clinks his coffee mug off of Chris’s.

It seems to be taken for granted that they don’t want the night to end, so they go for an aimless stroll, shoulders bumping as they walk.  The night is clear and cool.  Darren leans closer.  Chris, who has spent months stubbornly not noticing how _good_ he smells, happily breathes him in.  

“Fuck,” he says eloquently.

“Not on the first date, Chris.  What do you take me for?”

“Mm.  A disappointment, apparently.  And what happened to this not being a date?”

Darren laughs, sudden and musical.  “Just protecting my interests,” he says. There’s something beneath it, a vulnerability that Chris has come to realize is a real part of who he is – this complicated, maddening, delightful man.

“What about if I promise,” Chris whispers, “that I am going to do my best to help you protect your interests?”

A breeze blows up off the harbour and Chris shivers, taking the easy excuse to slide his arms around Darren’s neck.  Darren’s hands settle easy on his hips.

“I think I could get behind that,” Darren says, and leans in to kiss him, sweet and soft and dry.  It’s electric.      

Chris has been the biggest idiot alive.

…

“Is the second date too soon?”  

They technically went to dinner and a movie, but all Chris can remember about the movie is Darren’s distracting, wandering hand on his thigh, and the gleam of his eyes in the candlelight of the restaurant, warm and smiling.  They decided to walk back to Chris’s, slow and meandering, hands joined and swinging a little between them before they made it here despite themselves.  The last thing Chris wants to do is go inside.  Alone, at least.  

Darren mouths at his collarbone and sighs there, his fingers mapping a clever trail under Chris’s shirt.  “I mean, technically we’ve known each other like, forever.”

“Feels like it,” Chris agrees.  “All that time hating you was really just elaborate foreplay.”

“Pretending to hate me.”  Darren nips him lightly.  “Being super wrong about me.  I’m sure that’s what you meant.”  He shifts his hips and Chris groans, pushing closer.  

“If you don’t shut up in the next five seconds I’m going to put your mouth to better use.”  He inhales as Darren’s hands settle on his ass and tug him flush, so Chris can feel the hard length of him through his jeans.  He’s a little dizzy, almost giddy with how much he wants.

“How do you know that’s not my sinister plan?”

Chris rubs his face against the scratch of stubble Darren’s sporting, dragging his teeth lightly in his wake.  The shiver he feels run through Darren is exactly the reward he’s looking for.  “Upstairs,” he mumbles, urging Darren backwards.  “We can’t – if Lauren sees us she’ll cockblock for spite.  And to gloat.”

“Gloat?”  Darren asks curiously, but he does get moving.  Apparently the threat of being cockblocked at this point sounds as dire and horrifying to him as it does to Chris.  

“Yeah, she – you know what, I’ll tell you later,” Chris says, tugging him along, because this is not really the time or circumstance to get into the details of how stupid Chris really has been, at times.  Miraculously, two dates in two nights and no one is home, and Darren just shrugs and pulls Chris’s shirt over his head as soon as the bedroom door closes behind them.  Chris gets a little tangled trying to return the favour, but feels an all-over flush of need as soon as he does.

“God, you’re so hot,” he sighs, reminding himself to berate himself sometime later, when he isn’t much better occupied.

“Fuck, _you_ ,” Darren says.  He sits on the bed and pulls Chris forward by his hips, opening and peeling down his jeans as Chris watches him, a little dazed.  Chris’s cock twitches as Darren’s mouth settles on it through his boxer briefs and sucks, drawing a high whine from Chris.    

“Oh – god, is this okay?” He has a handful of Darren’s (oh god gorgeous, oh god _why_ was he so STUPID) hair and is itching to pull.

“Mm.”  Darren draws back, “just not like, hard enough to scalp me, okay?”

Chris smiles.  “I promise.”

Darren curls his fingers in the waist of Chris’s underwear and tugs them down before eagerly kicking out of the rest of his own clothes.  Chris pushes him back on the bed and crawls on top of him, shuddering as their hips align.  

“This is the time to have the STIs, no-fly zones, pregnancies conversation,” Darren says as he squeezes Chris’s ass.  “Which I really hope is the condensed version because, oh my god.”  His bucks up a little, helplessly, making Chris groan.  

“So responsible,” Chris says, very little sarcasm in his admiration.  “Tested three weeks ago, clean as a whistle, you can – wait, pregnancies?”  He sits up to straddle Darren’s hips, and tries not to be distracted by all that golden skin, the contrast of his own pale hand running over it, the thick flushed cock lying against Darren’s stomach.

Darren giggles.  “Sorry.  It’s been a little while since I had this talk with a guy.  I don’t have any created pregnancies under my belt either, just so we’re clear!  And I’m clean and not to be presumptuous but condoms are non-negotiable if we’re fucking, and I normally top but I’m flexible.  Also up to switch.”  He grins at his own stupid joke, and Chris would make fun of him, but his brain did stall out at ‘flexible’ because he has a dim memory that Darren does yoga, so that’s probably very true.

“I think we’re going to get along just fine,” Chris sighs, reaching to stroke Darren and relishing in the way he jumps a little at the touch.    

He had no illusions about this lasting long enough to coordinate anything more than a quick release, because finally admitting what he wants is a struck match inside him that he can’t contain.  He just wants to touch Darren everywhere – he can worry about finesse and being impressive the next time.    
But Darren has other ideas, and stills the hand Chris has on him.  “I want you to fuck me,” he says, his whole face open and trusting, “if you want to.”  

Chris closes his eyes and breathes deep, sinking into a sweet, soft kiss.  “Yes,” he whispers there.  “Yes, yes, definitely yes.”  He feels Darren’s smile form, feels the little rumble of happy laughter in his chest beneath Chris’s.  It strikes him then, how fun this is – how badly Darren wants it to be fun, and playful, and how much he wants the same.  He tickles Darren as he rolls to reach for condoms and lube, and Darren yelps and tackles him.    

Chris sinks inside him, finally, and Darren’s eyes flutter closed as he strains for control.  “You feel amazing,” Chris says as Darren grips tight around him, because he does, digging in his nails as Chris starts to move.  It’s a sweet slow burn as Chris finds a rhythm, and Darren rolls him and rides him, gleaming with sweat.  It still doesn’t last long – there’s no human way, but it’s fine, they can go again, and again.  The thought of it combined with the little noises Darren’s making, the all-over sheen of sweat on his skin as he works onto Chris’s cock and up into Chris’s hand sends Chris over the edge and he jerks up hard, distantly registering Darren following him.  All he can do is smile.    

–

Maybe Chris is getting soft in his old age, or watching too many rom-coms, or just deluded, but he really expected news of his and Darren’s new status to be cause for celebration among their circle of friends.  At the very least he expects someone to yell “finally!” and congratulate them for getting their acts together.  Instead there is mostly silence.

“Good for you guys,” Joe Walker says finally, a clear attempt to just cut the tension – but Chris smiles gratefully nonetheless.  Darren’s grip on Chris’s hand has slowly tightened, and Chris can see that he’s confused and disappointed.  Chris squeezes back and gives him a reassuring smile when Darren looks to him.  Darren smiles back.

“So now that’s out of the way,” Chris says, “let’s start arguing about what movie we’re watching, because I need to get to bed early tonight.”

“Bet you do,” Lauren mutters, but she shares a smile with Darren, and Chris feels a tiny bit lighter.

…

“What do you think that was about?” Now Darren is fixating, and it’s driving Chris crazy.  He’s been half-hard for the last hour with Darren pressed close to him on the couch and idly tracing patterns on his wrist, up his forearm.  They’ve finally made their excuses and escaped to the bedroom, but now that Darren’s on top of him he looks troubled again, propped up on an elbow, palm flat against Chris’s chest.  

“Can I think about it later?” Chris knows he’s perilously close to whining.  He can’t be sorry for it.

Darren’s expression turns contrite.  "Of course.  I’m sorry.“  He sinks into a sweet kiss that turns dirty almost immediately, and Chris’s hips buck to find friction as Darren settles on top of him.  He’s just worked Darren’s jeans open when he feels Darren’s hesitation again.

"It’s just –”

“Ugh, oh god, okay.”  Chris breathes deeply.  "We can have this talk if you get off me, because I totally can’t concentrate, and if you make it up to me after, because I have good reasons for not being able to concentrate.“  He rubs against Darren’s thigh.

Darren rolls off right away and takes his hand instead.  "I’m so sorry.  I’m definitely going to make it up to you.  Sorry I haven’t shown you yet, but did you know I can mostly deepthroat?”

“Oh my god, not helping,” Chris whimpers, covering his eyes with his free hand.  "Shut up and ask what you need to ask.“

"Sorry, sorry.”  He’s definitely amused though, so, not sorry enough.  "I just – why do you think everybody was so weird and awkward?  They love both of us, they should love us together?“

Chris weighs his options. "Honestly?”

“Please,” Darren says, sounding mildly scandalized that he might get something other than the truth.  Sometimes Chris forgets how … Darren … Darren is.

“If I had to bet, I think they’re worried about you.”  

“Um.  Why?  I’ve dated some awful people.  They know you’re not awful.”

“Probably because you’ve dated some awful people, and because even if they like me, they know I haven’t always been … nice … to you.  Or about you.  Or remotely deserved you?”  It’s hard to say out loud, hard to be wrong at the best of times but to have been so inadvertently wrong about Darren – it sucks.

“You just didn’t know me,” Darren says patiently.  "It wasn’t intentional.“

"But it kind of – I mean, I didn’t _want_ to know you.  I wasn’t fair, and I was stupid, and I think everyone’s just wondering when the other shoe will drop and – squash you.”

Darren mulls that over for a while, Chris beginning to wonder if Darren’s also wondering when the inevitable squashing will come.  "I’m not fragile,“ he says finally.  "I know I’m trusting, but there is a difference.”

“I know,” Chris says automatically, though he’s not sure he did know that for certain.  

“I could hurt you too.  That’s just how this shit goes.  And I think you’re selling yourself short here because you’ve also dated some dumb guys and everybody knows it.”

“… Great.”

“No, but seriously.”  Darren looks at him, all earnest with his hair curling every which way on the pillow, and god, Chris wants to wake up to that face in the worst way for as long as humanly possible.  "I think they’re just sketched about friends dating friends, it doesn’t have a great history within this group of working out all that well.  And they love both of us and they don’t want another round of dramatics if it goes wrong.“

"But it doesn’t have to go wrong,” Chris says.

“No, it doesn’t.”  Darren smiles then, broad and sunny.  "That’s the spirit exactly.  And if we’ve gotta prove it to those guys, fine, but we only really need to prove it to each other, you know?“

Again, Chris is unsure if he knew that, but Darren just has a way of making him feel like sometimes the happiest solution is also the most plausible.  "Yes,” he whispers.  He leans over then to kiss Darren, and Darren’s sigh is sweet as he puts his all into the moment.

In the end it’s not the frantic rough fucking Chris was craving earlier – probably for the best as there’s still a living room full of people who would not hesitate to tell them to shut the fuck up.  Instead it’s sweeter; Darren’s mouth hot and slick on him and so tortuously slow, wet sounds as Chris winds his fingers in Darren’s hair and tips his own head back.  He does cry out when Darren pushes inside him, can’t not, it’s been a long time since he bottomed but the urge is strong with Darren, and Darren fingered him open for what felt like hours, dazed with pleasure as Darren kept his mouth on him intermittently, enough to keep him on edge but never enough to push him over.  

When he finally comes his vision goes blank; Darren smacks his hand over his mouth to at least dull the cry (it still sounds like a shoe hits the door, but he could care less).  Darren’s still moving inside him, and he strokes his hair, breathlessly urges him on, doesn’t care that it’s almost too much now as he tries to process how it feels to be looked at like that – Darren’s face radiating adoration.  He holds Darren tight when he finally comes, stroking every inch of skin he can reach.  Hoping that Darren can sense how much all that feeling is mutual.

“So let’s just agree to never stop doing that,” Darren croaks after a minute, and Chris just laughs and kisses him.

“I know.  Pretty good show for mortal enemies.”

…

[ _Two months later_ ]

“I have incredibly bad news,” Chris announces.  Sun streaks across Darren’s skin as he rolls over in bed and blinks sleepily at Chris.

“Wha?”  He yawns and shakes his head like a puppy coming awake in a way that is almost maddeningly appealing.  

“I have news, and it’s _awful_.”

“Chris.”  Darren sits up, looking concerned.  “What’s going on?  You look pale.  Actually,” he squints, “you look – green.  Did you eat that leftover manicotti when you got home last night?  Man that was too old to eat the last time you thought about it, I told you to throw it out and pick up takeout!”

“No!  No.”  Fuck Darren for not taking this seriously, and sitting there looking like that, and just – fuck him.  Actually – he puts that on the agenda.  “No, the news is … I’m kind of …” He sits.  “I think I might be in love with you.”

“…”

“SAY SOMETHING.”

Darren’s mouth twists with the effort it takes not to laugh outright.  “I … we’ve said that.  We said that like three weeks ago.  It was a whole thing.  I bought you flowers and chocolates and we had really amazing sex.”  He feels Chris’s forehead and what is it about Chris that makes this a constant fucking requirement?  “Are you having memory problems?  Do we need to go to the hospital?”

“No!  I’m fine, I know we said it, but – no, I totally meant it!” he rushes to add, off Darren’s growingly dismayed expression.  “It’s just … sinking in.  Holy shit.”

“ _Three weeks_.”

“Listen, just, shut up.”

“You literally said it five times when you came yesterday.”

“Shut uuuuup.”

“All over me.  You could have written it on me, for all I know.  Actually, maybe you do need a refresher.”  He catches Chris’s wrist and topples him into the sheets.  Chris laughs, helpless and hopelessly happy, and keeps him close.


End file.
